The Malaysian Insider :: Breaking Views
The Malaysian Insider :: Breaking Views |
| China ends Lunar New Year with molten metal showers Posted: 25 Feb 2013 07:56 AM PST
China's Lantern Festival traditionally signals the close of just over two weeks of rest and feasting during the Lunar New Year, the country's biggest holiday, which sees hundreds of millions return to their ancestral homes. Cities across the country echoed with explosions as millions took to the streets to set off fireworks, and one village hosted a molten metal throwing festival, one of a host of ancient Chinese customs revived in recent decades. With little more than a straw hat and goggles for protection, a team of farmers spooned molten hot metal from buckets before hurling it at a brick wall, where it rained down in fountains of glowing shards. The spectacle brought roars of approval from the audience in Nuanquan village, a few hours drive from Beijing, which has revived the centuries-old festival in a bid to boost tourism, building a dedicated amphitheatre for the purpose. Scrap iron collected from households in the village is melted down in primitive furnaces, which shoot flames and torrents of sparks into the night sky behind the technicolour stage. Donning a straw hat and a wooly jacket, one 49-year-old maize farmer completed his transition to a fire-thrower, saying: "I love doing it... there's no danger at all." The fiery festival is said to have been invented over 300 years ago by poor blacksmiths in the village who could not afford the fireworks traditionally used during the season. "We have an ancient saying, if you don't set off fireworks or throw molten metal... the village won't be peaceful, we still believe that," festival performer Liu Yueqing said, before taking to the stage in a bright yellow uniform. But the festival was banned during the tumultous decade of the Cultural Revolution from 1966 to 1976. "If you took part, you could be arrested," a local resident surnamed Zou said. "Anyone who took part was said to be cow monsters and snake demons," he said, referring to a slogan used to condemn people during the period, adding that the revived version of the festival was "bigger and better than ever". Faced with low profits from farming, villages across China have turned to tourism as a source of income, rediscovering their ancient architecture, crafts and festivals as a way of luring visitors from the cities. Some taking in the sites at Nuanquan were worried by the tourism push. "Now the biggest threat to traditional village culture isn't politics – it's economics," Hou Xue, a Beijing cultural relic enthusiast said. "These flashy government organised events don't have the right flavour, they don't seem authentic," he added. While hot metal sparks fizzed under the full moon, others in China set off fireworks and ate sweet dumplings to mark the festival. "The pork ones sold out early. We can't make enough," said a clerk at a branch of a famous dumpling chain in China's commercial hub of Shanghai, who offered crab meat or sweet sesame paste alternatives. Worshippers thronged Shanghai's Jing'an Buddhist Temple, burning incense and tossing coins into a giant urn to make wishes for the coming year. A "fireworks spree" yesterday evening led to Beijing's air quality falling to hazardous levels, the state-run China Radio International reported. Parts of the country have been blanketed with thick smog in recent weeks, with the pollution blamed on coal-burning and auto exhaust emissions. Many of China's migrant workers living in rural areas delay their return to their workplaces beyond the official public holiday, which lasts only a week. – AFP/Relaxnews |
| Bela Tarr swaps film making for running unique school Posted: 25 Feb 2013 07:46 AM PST
The 57-year-old retired from directing after the release in 2011 of "The Turin Horse", a bleak, black-and-white portrayal of a peasant and his daughter abandoned by man and God in their remote, windswept cottage. Its long takes and sparse dialogue and narrative were trademarks of Tarr, who won over critics around the world and is perhaps most famous for his seven-hour epic "Satantango" based on a novel by compatriot Laszlo Krasznahorkai. It will come as little surprise to hear Tarr speak not of commercial success in cinema, but artistic integrity at a time when independent filmmakers are struggling to raise money to make movies that have limited box office potential. "Film is different — you cannot teach, you can do only one thing which is to develop young filmmakers — give them freedom, tell them they can be brave, they can be themselves, do what they really want," Tarr said in an interview. Last week classes began at his newly launched Film Factory at the Sarajevo University School for Science and Technology, offering a three-year programme which Tarr and his associates said would adopt a fresh approach to filmmaking. "It started when I decided not to make any more movies," Tarr said of his idea to launch an international PhD-level film programme for mature directors. "I had the feeling this was the next step in my life because I want to share what I know, and I want to protect young filmmakers, give them the protection to be free," he told Reuters in his offices in the Bosnian capital. ART BACK INTO FILM Accommodated in a building located in the old part of Sarajevo, his Film Factory is now home to 17 students who have come from as far as Japan and Mexico to explore the secrets of filmmaking. "It's a unique attempt to really work artistically in film, and to bring film to the level of art again," said Fred Kelemen, a German cinematographer and director who runs a camera workshop at the school. "I think it's very important because it's something that many film schools around the world do not do any more," he added before mentoring students in capturing light against a dark backdrop on camera. Kelemen has worked with Tarr on several films, and has been branded by critics as the "maestro of black and white silence". The programme includes a theoretical section based on analysing films as well as practical workshops, which will be run by independent cinema stars including Aki Kaurismaki, Gus Van Sant, Jim Jarmusch and Tilda Swinton. Students are expected to produce four films over the first two years and a feature in the final year. "It looks like a menu," Tarr said of his programme. "In the end you have to cook your own food. The third part, when they are making their own movies, is where the real cooking is done, and that is my responsibility." Most students said they applied for the school because of its unconventional approach to film and its roster of prominent figures from the film industry. "After 110 years of cinema we are at the point where everything is undone," said Keja Ho Kramer from France, who has worked in the film business for the past 12 years. "So to have an opportunity to rethink where the future is with all these amazing people is what interests me most." Tarr is confident the course will achieve its goal of promoting freedom of art and expression, and produce some "good, strong movies. "We are here, we have cameras, we have lights, we have fantasy, they have time, they are young, full of energy, full of hope — I do not see a problem. We just have to work, work, work, work." — Reuters |
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